People in need reached245,102 direct beneficiaries and an estimated 5,010,500 indirect beneficiaries

Worked in UgandaSince 1979

DCA in Uganda

DCA has been supporting poor communities in Uganda with relief and long term development assistance since 1979, working in areas with increasing levels of inequality and exclusion based on income, geography, gender, age and displacement as a result of conflict and other disasters and harsh climatic conditions.

Uganda’s economic growth has slowed down, and inflation is on the rise with negative impact on food prices.

Uganda is the largest refugee hosting country in Africa with more than 1.3 million refugees, of which more than 1 million have come from war-torn South Sudan. Within Uganda itself, the political environment is full of uncertainties, particularly with the removal of the presidential (and other) age limits, which would allow for the current and future presidents to rule in perpetuity, and compulsory land acquisition that would allow the government to grab land from individual private owners, to give to investors. As the debates over these developments intensify, the civil society space is increasingly becoming narrow for opposing views.

DCA’s Uganda programme targets the poor and vulnerable people of Uganda including refugees, with a focus on women who are affected by negative socio-cultural practices including sexual and gender-based violence and lack of access and control over productive resources like land. Youth is another important target group generally marred by poverty, inadequate education and skills, inadequate work/employment opportunities, exploitation, disease, civil unrest and gender discrimination, which is exacerbated by the national youth unemployment rate in Uganda estimated at 80%.

DCA’s Humanitarian work is done as part of the interagency response coordinated by the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM) and UNHCR, responding to the over one million refugees that are presently in the country, mainly from South Sudan. In line with Uganda’s policy framework on refugee assistance, at least 70% beneficiaries of DCA’s humanitarian response are refugees while 30% are from the refugee-hosting communities.

While recent Refugee Response Plans have scaled down the planning figures for the refugees entering Uganda over the coming months, uncertainty remains on the political situation in South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

We work closely with partner organisations and government structures at different levels, while also doing direct/self-implementation in our humanitarian response to the South Sudanese refugee influx. We work in the humanitarian-development nexus, and introduce cash-based interventions, appropriate technologies and digital solutions to address vulnerability; we build local capacity; we support appropriate livelihoods including access to land and climate change adaptation; and we fight for gender equality, transparency and social accountability.

Activities in Uganda

Empowering Youth

As part of DCAs global strategic objective to build resilient communities, DCA Uganda, with funding from the European Union, is implementing a project aimed at reducing extreme poverty and marginalization of vulnerable youth through vocational training, entrepreneurship and capacity building in the Karamoja sub region of the country.

Uganda has one of the youngest populations in the world, with 77% of the population under the age of 30, of which 48% are below 15 years, and with a youth-unemployment-rate of 80%. The primary school completion rate only stands at 54%, meaning that the majority of the youth drop out of school before attaining an employable skill. Among the largely pastoralist Karamojong communities were DCA Uganda works, the literacy rates are 11% compared to the national average of 67%.

DCA, with its partners, provides vulnerable youth with skills to build their capacities to significantly improve their chances of alternative employment/income opportunities. The youth empowerment project employs a three-pronged strategy to achieve this objective. First, to strengthen the capacity of vocational training institutes to better deliver the needed skills to the youth. Secondly, to facilitate young unemployed youths to attend skills training at the training institutes, and thirdly, to support the trained youth to link up with businesses that require their skills or to get self-employed.

To date 365 youth (Male195: Female170) have graduated in various trades such as Masonry (74), Carpentry (20), Tailoring (129), ICT (21), Agroforestry (52), Motor Vehicle Mechanics (38) and Hairdressing (31) as a result of the project. This is contributing to increase in the number of youth engaged in gainful employment, increased income and strengthened Life skills of the trained youth.

Enhancing Social Accountability

DCA empowers communities to claim their rights and hold leaders accountable to the exercise of power and resource utilization for improved access to rights and good service delivery outcomes. DCA supports social accountability initiatives using the Community Based and Evaluation System (CBMES) through Community Based Monitoring Groups which monitor public service points, expose leakages, resource misuse and advocate for improved service delivery.

The approach benchmarks Human Rights Based Approach principles and the AAAQ framework (Accessibility, Availability, Acceptability and Quality of public service delivery) vis-à-vis government commitments and standards. The findings of a 2017 Rights Based Approach assessment, indicated that community-based monitoring of services (CBMES) is key in promoting recognition of rights, redistribution of resources and power, as well as increased representation of marginalized groups in decision making processes.

The CBMES approach has been adopted by many of DCA’s partners in different regions of the country and has recently moved to a digitised approach using smartphones to ensure efficiency and real-time documentation of results, thereby giving accumulated evidence and credibility to the advocacy for improved service delivery.

Promoting Livelihoods in Emergency Response

Since October 2016, DCA has responded to the huge influx of conflict-affected South Sudanese refugees in Uganda through Cash-Based Interventions. In January 2017, DCA led an ECHO-funded consortium implementing multipurpose cash grants (MPGs) linked to the provision of Mental Health Psychosocial Support (MHPSS) targeting People with Special Needs (PSNs) in the Bidibidi settlement, Yumbe District in Northern Uganda.

The objective was to provide refugees with increased access to food and basic needs items and to provide psychosocial support. The project provided 10,500 PSNs with monthly MPGs of USD 11 and mental health screening; of which 10% were provided with Cognitive Behaviour Trauma Therapy (CBTT).

One of the key learnings from the project was that when cash and protection are linked, it provides both financial and emotional security to the PSNs and protects them from financial exploitation and distress. and empowers people to make sound financial decisions.

DCA is the leading implementing partner for UNHCR in the livelihood sector in Bidibidi, Rhino camp and Imvepi refugee settlements in the West Nile sub-region of Uganda. The livelihood interventions ensure that families and households in both refugee settlements and host communities have the capacity and resources to provide secure and sustainable livelihoods for themselves and their communities. Consequently, DCA is promoting the nexus approach as a bridge between humanitarian response and development. This is in line with Uganda’s Comprehensive Refugee Response Framework which seeks to empower both refugee and host communities to be self-reliant.

Within the livelihood interventions, DCA has initiated flag-ship innovative digital solutions such as use of electronic vouchers, electronic cash transfers, use of mobile messaging, and digitisation of Village Savings and Loans Associations to promote efficiency and effectiveness of the humanitarian support.